Netflix greenlights new "Lost in Space"

[WebLurker]

Yes, that's exactly why this seems odd to me. If these descriptions are real, then it's just using the names and nothing else. It's sort of like the new MacGyver remake -- Mac aside, the show reuses character and institution names from the original for people and things that bear no resemblance to their namesakes. Except there it just seems like random reassignments. In this case, it's more like deliberate opposition. As I said, I can understand trying to balance out the problems with the original, but they seem to have forgotten to keep the more viable aspects.

I haven't seen this show, but, even though I'm not exactly the biggest fan of the original, it doesn't sound like something I'd like.

That's only because Smith was the breakout character and the writers tended to ignore the others almost completely. If you look at the early first season, when it was more of an ensemble show, the other characters have more substance.

Actually, the episodes I've seen are early first season, ironically enough. Maybe if I get a chance to see more, I'll see what you mean.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Granted, I've only seen a handful of the original Lost in Space episodes, but from my memory, Dr. Smith was the most distinct character on the series. Will was pretty well-defined and Penny had her moments, and the Robot was cool, but the other characters were really flat.

The other characters were flat because they were designed to be cardboard archetypes of "strong father." "caring mother," "assertive second in command" and so on. Irwin Allen rarely added dimension to his characters, and its worst examples are found in Lost in Space. Early on, the Smith takeover was set in motion by Harris' own view of the character, as he recalls from The Fantasy Worlds of Irwin Allen documentary:

Harris: "I played many villains in my time, and my most successful villains have been comedic villains. And I began to sneak it in, and I must say, Irwin not only allowed me to do that, but one day said, "Do more!" And the rest, as you say, is history."

A careful review of LiS' first season sees the "sinister agent" template of Smith quickly fade away in favor of the one that pleased Irwin Allen. The wild, screaming Smith was allowed to be the center of the series, and the primary draw--even in relationships with Will and the Robot.

So, they're cutting out a key character and one of the few that worked to what point?

To escape the 51 year stigma of LiS being all about the screaming, scheming, over-the-top Harris version of Smith, a character that marginalized the rest of the cast to a degree where they were merely responding to Smith's antics most of the time. No modern producer will drop any kind of Smith on a new LiS series.

 

[JD]

I'm surprised we don't see a new Smith in the main cast, but I'm not about to write the whole show just because he isn't there. With so much of the over the top elements, and ridiculousness coming from Dr. Smith in the original, then I could see wanting to avoid him.
It's also worth keeping in mind that the descriptions do sound there will be other people with them, so Smith might just be a recurring character.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I'd think that doing Lost in Space without Dr. Smith is like doing Star Trek without Spock. It can be done, of course, but, in the case of Star Trek, all of the spinoffs had a Spock-surrogate, including DS9 in which Dax was initially written that way, even though she grew into something else as the show progressed.

 

[Myko]

Well, was it really Dr. Smith that was appealing, or was it Jonathan Harris?

 

[Christopher]

I'm surprised we don't see a new Smith in the main cast...

I'm not, because the previous attempt at a TV reboot didn't have a Smith either. If anything, though, I'm surprised at how similar this version seems to the previous pilot, given how totally it tanked.

Well, was it really Dr. Smith that was appealing, or was it Jonathan Harris?

It could've been both, with a little more discipline. Smith, as originally conceived, was an intriguing character -- essentially Iago, a devious and self-serving manipulator who puts on a compelling facade of charm and helpfulness, but with the occasional hint of more redemptive qualities. And Harris played that version of Smith magnificently, with a perfect mix of malevolence, charm, and humor. That's why it's such a pity that he was given free rein to overindulge his comedic side and turn the role into a clownish caricature. Allowing him to do whatever he wanted with the role kept him from doing his best work as an actor.

 

[Kahless the Unforgettable]

since that cast list is for series regulars perhaps Smith will be reoccurring or maybe will show up on the season finale?

Or, much more likely, there was no casting call for him because he was hand-picked. Considering how vital his role is/would be in the show.

I mean, was there a casting call for Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones despite Peter Dinklage having had the role before he was even asked about it? Same difference.

 

[Photoman15]

Smith in the first half/third of Season 1 was good. The buffoon that Harris (and Allen) made him into made LIS a kids show. I know it would have been hard to keep Smith as evil as he originally was, but some GOOD writing could have. Maybe some mind altering drug or memory loss with occasional flashes?

 

[mos6507]

I'm not, because the previous attempt at a TV reboot didn't have a Smith either. If anything, though, I'm surprised at how similar this version seems to the previous pilot, given how totally it tanked.

Exactly. We've never seen a successful attempt to do LiS without Smith. It's the kind of thing that exists only as an abstract ideal but as they say, be careful what you wish for. A "straight" LiS sans Smith might get pretty dull pretty fast. Maybe better as a miniseries than an ongoing series.

 

[Christopher]

Smith in the first half/third of Season 1 was good. The buffoon that Harris (and Allen) made him into made LIS a kids show.

It was always a kids' show. All the Irwin Allen series were. Indeed, most SFTV series before Star Trek were aimed at children, aside from a few anthologies like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. ST was a deliberate attempt to try something new by doing an adult SF drama with continuing characters.

I know it would have been hard to keep Smith as evil as he originally was, but some GOOD writing could have. Maybe some mind altering drug or memory loss with occasional flashes?

Smith was never really evil, just selfish, greedy, and opportunistic. He didn't hesitate to put his own self-interest before others', but he could work toward others' interests so long as it benefitted him to do so (like in episode 5 where he saved the Robinsons so that he wouldn't be alone with nobody interesting to talk to). He could've worked well enough as a continuing character in that vein, recognizing that it was in his best interests to help and cooperate with the Robinsons for the most part, while still being unreliable and prone to deceit and manipulation. The problem was that he lost his enlightened self-interest and became stupidly, reflexively greedy and cowardly even when it should've hurt his standing with the family. The original Smith would've known better.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Well, was it really Dr. Smith that was appealing, or was it Jonathan Harris?

It was more Harris than Smith, but the door to Smith taking center stage...and the unchained silliness was opened all along. As posted earlier, Harris said:

Harris: "I played many villains in my time, and my most successful villains have been comedic villains. And I began to sneak it in, and I must say, Irwin not only allowed me to do that, but one day said, "Do more!" And the rest, as you say, is history."

It helps when most of the other characters are as appealing as discarded cardboard.

Moreover, LiS story editor Anthony Wilson had already helped conceive Smith to eventually lose the "sinister agent" character (it happened in only a few episodes) and--as pilot screenwriter Shimon Wincelberg (as S. Bar-David) said--the Smith character was intended to eventually to become more of a father figure for Will than the John Robinson character. With that--and Irwin Allen's blessing, there was no way Smith was not going to dominate the series.

 

[Richard Baker]

Smith was never really evil, just selfish, greedy, and opportunistic. He didn't hesitate to put his own self-interest before others', but he could work toward others' interests so long as it benefitted him to do so (like in episode 5 where he saved the Robinsons so that he wouldn't be alone with nobody interesting to talk to).

Wasn't ther an early episode where Smith programmed the Robot to go out and attack Will? It has been a long time, but I remember a show teaser they always attached to the end of the show for next week. Will was at the Chariot at night and the Robot was coming for him with lightning shooting out of his claws.
If I remember correctly that seems rather evil to me.

 

[Christopher]

Wasn't ther an early episode where Smith programmed the Robot to go out and attack Will? It has been a long time, but I remember a show teaser they always attached to the end of the show for next week. Will was at the Chariot at night and the Robot was coming for him with lightning shooting out of his claws.
If I remember correctly that seems rather evil to me.

Actually it was pretty much the opposite of that. He programmed the Robot to kill the others when they were alone, to make it look like an accident so he wouldn't be implicated. He didn't target any one of them specifically. But when he realized that Will, whom he'd gotten to know and like, was the person who'd happened to end up alone with the Robot, he had pangs of conscience and couldn't go through with it.

That's the thing about Smith. He was venal and greedy enough to be willing in theory to sacrifice others' lives for his own profit, if he could do it from a distance and didn't actually have to see it happen -- if it were detached enough from him that he could see it as an abstraction. If he'd just been able to sabotage the ship, walk away, and then have the ship just inexplicably vanish in space, then he wouldn't have had to get his hands dirty and he would've had a lifetime of sybaritic luxury to help distract him from any pangs of conscience, thanks to the payoff he expected from his spymasters. But once he was stranded with the Robinsons, once he got to know them personally and had to share his life with them, he couldn't go through with committing direct violence against them, because he didn't really have it in him. (Yes, there was the scene in the pilot where he karate chopped a guard and grinned wickedly, and some interpret that as him murdering the guard, but it's ambiguous whether the guard is dead or just unconscious.)

So Smith certainly wasn't good, but he wasn't really evil either. He could be paid off to arrange for people's death at a distance, and he could abandon others to die in order to save his own skin, but he didn't have the desire to harm people for the sake of harming them. He was just deeply narcissistic, putting himself above others and freely manipulating and deceiving others in order to benefit himself. But he did have a few shreds of human decency here and there. He respected people he considered intellectual equals, like most of the Robinsons, and he did feel affection and concern for the children. Which is why he was closest to Will, who was both a child and a genius. Although the fact that Will was naive enough to be easily manipulated was a factor there as well.

 

[Kahless the Unforgettable]

So Smith certainly wasn't good, but he wasn't really evil either.

You have some really interesting ideas about what makes someone evil.

In my book, a scheming spy who plots to murder an entire family of people is most definitely in the evil camp. The fact that the only reason he doesn't murder them all is because of his own selfish wants and needs only drives his wickedness home even more, not less.

 

[Saga]

anyone who would destroy a spaceship with a family on board, program a robot to kill said family, sell out family even though they have been feeding and protecting him... that person is evil.

 

[Christopher]

anyone who would destroy a spaceship with a family on board, program a robot to kill said family, sell out family even though they have been feeding and protecting him... that person is evil.

No, the actions are evil. As I said, Smith is certainly not good, but he's not totally irredeemable, because human morality is not just an on-off switch. Smith was willing to plan to commit violence in the abstract, because he'd been promised a great deal of money for doing so, but he found he couldn't go through with it once he got to know his victims. Who knows? If he had succeeded in his plan, if he'd left the ship before it launched and the Robinsons had died in space, he might not have been able to live with the guilt. We don't know, since he never actually succeeded in becoming a murderer. (Although in the '90s comic revival, it was established that he had successfully sabotaged the Jupiter 1, which had blown up on the pad with his lover aboard, something that clearly haunted him.)

The problem with "good" and "evil" is that they're too broad. They aren't really useful at defining what motivates characters, or real people, to do the things they do. People do evil things -- or good things -- for all sorts of reasons. There's room for characters like Snidely Whiplash or Skeletor who do evil simply because they "are evil," but more interesting characters have more complex motivations and more ambiguities. Smith in the early first season was such a nuanced character. If he actually had been outright "evil," he would've made more attempts to kill the Robinsons or Major West, but he didn't. What defined Smith was not willful malevolence or sadism or homicidal urges, but narcissism, greed, and cowardice. His self-interest could motivate him to do either good or evil -- for instance, in episode 5, he saved the Robinsons' lives because he didn't want to be stuck without human companionship. That's why it's more accurate to define him as narcissistic than "evil." Good and evil are choices people make, or the consequences of their choices. They're not fundamental identities. We all have the capacity to do both good and evil things, sometimes for the same reasons.

 

[Kahless the Unforgettable]

No, the actions are evil. As I said, Smith is certainly not good, but he's not totally irredeemable, because human morality is not just an on-off switch. Smith was willing to plan to commit violence in the abstract, because he'd been promised a great deal of money for doing so, but he found he couldn't go through with it once he got to know his victims.

Uh, wrong.

He didn't go through with it to save his own hide because he knew he couldn't survive on his own. EVERY SINGLE OPPORTUNITY he had in which he thought he could betray/ditch/kill them and stand a chance of surviving/getting home, he tried to take. The only times he -ever- backed down, aside from a mild fondness for Will, was when he realized the individuals he was dealing with were going to betray him right back.

The dude was evil through and through.

 

[Saga]

No, the actions are evil. As I said, Smith is certainly not good, but he's not totally irredeemable, because human morality is not just an on-off switch. Smith was willing to plan to commit violence in the abstract, because he'd been promised a great deal of money for doing so, but he found he couldn't go through with it once he got to know his victims. Who knows? If he had succeeded in his plan, if he'd left the ship before it launched and the Robinsons had died in space, he might not have been able to live with the guilt. We don't know, since he never actually succeeded in becoming a murderer. (Although in the '90s comic revival, it was established that he had successfully sabotaged the Jupiter 1, which had blown up on the pad with his lover aboard, something that clearly haunted him.)

The problem with "good" and "evil" is that they're too broad. They aren't really useful at defining what motivates characters, or real people, to do the things they do. People do evil things -- or good things -- for all sorts of reasons. There's room for characters like Snidely Whiplash or Skeletor who do evil simply because they "are evil," but more interesting characters have more complex motivations and more ambiguities. Smith in the early first season was such a nuanced character. If he actually had been outright "evil," he would've made more attempts to kill the Robinsons or Major West, but he didn't. What defined Smith was not willful malevolence or sadism or homicidal urges, but narcissism, greed, and cowardice. His self-interest could motivate him to do either good or evil -- for instance, in episode 5, he saved the Robinsons' lives because he didn't want to be stuck without human companionship. That's why it's more accurate to define him as narcissistic than "evil." Good and evil are choices people make, or the consequences of their choices. They're not fundamental identities. We all have the capacity to do both good and evil things, sometimes for the same reasons.

if 90% of the actions you do are evil, you are evil.

 

[Christopher]

if 90% of the actions you do are evil, you are evil.

Which doesn't apply here. You're basing your assessment of Smith on actions he performed in just the first three episodes -- and they're actions that he didn't even succeed in. He started out planning to do an evil thing, but he failed and ultimately realized he couldn't follow through, because he didn't have it in him to be a killer after all, at least not with people he knew well. After that he became merely selfish, deceitful, cowardly, and unreliable, rather than murderous. He became a comic villain, a nuisance and a misbehaving man-child rather than an enemy. They never would've kept him around if he'd been actively malicious.

 

[Saga]

Which doesn't apply here. You're basing your assessment of Smith on actions he performed in just the first three episodes -- and they're actions that he didn't even succeed in. He started out planning to do an evil thing, but he failed and ultimately realized he couldn't follow through, because he didn't have it in him to be a killer after all, at least not with people he knew well. After that he became merely selfish, deceitful, cowardly, and unreliable, rather than murderous. He became a comic villain, a nuisance and a misbehaving man-child rather than an enemy. They never would've kept him around if he'd been actively malicious.

comic actions, ineptitude and bumbling does not excuse prior actions. i know you don't hear this very often, but you are wrong. Smith is evil.